Sonos Acquires A Voice Assistant Startup

There are several voice assistants in the market today, like Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, Cortana, and Bixby, just to name a few, but could Sonos could be looking to build something of their own? According to a report from Variety, it seems that the company is interested in voice assistants as the company has acquired a voice assistant startup called Snips for $37.5 million.

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That being said, it is unclear as to exactly what Sonos plans to do with their acquisition, but it seems that the company is not planning on building a rival to other digital assistants. According to Sonos CEO Patrick Spence, he was quoted as saying, “We are not building an ask-anything assistant. It’s an option we want to provide customers. Freedom of choice has been a big part of our message.”

Instead, it seems that the company’s acquisition will be used for music-related tasks, but what exactly that entails remains to be seen. However, if there is one advantage that Snips is expected to have over the competition, is that the processing will be done on the host device. This means that it will be more private and also potentially faster.

We wouldn’t be surprised if in a future update, Sonos could include the voice assistant on their own speakers. As it stands, Sonos already supports digital assistants like Google Assistant and Alexa, so a third option doesn’t seem entirely out of the question.